People

Rex Nielson, Director of the Humanities Center

Rex P. Nielson is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the BYU Humanities Center. His interests include literary and cultural studies, especially in relation to the Portuguese-speaking world. He has taught all levels of Portuguese language as well as a variety of courses on Luso-Afro-Brazilian literature and culture, as well as interdisciplinary courses for Latin American Studies, Africana Studies, Global Women’s Studies, and the BYU Honors Program. His research interests focus on (1) ecocriticism and environmental ethics in Brazil and the global south, (2) race and gender in Luso-Brazilian culture, (3) language and literature pedagogy, and (4) translation studies. He has served in various professional organizations, including as the President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA) (2019–2020). Rex and his wife, Natalie, an adjunct professor in the Department of Comparative Arts and Letters, live in Provo and are the proud parents of five children.

Brooke Browne, Assistant Director of the Humanities Center

Brooke Browne originally joined the BYU Humanities Center in 2015, and she is excited to be back as the Assistant Director after a 2-year hiatus. She loved growing up at the base of the mountain in Mapleton where she now lives next door to her childhood home. She graduated from BYU with a BS in Home and Family Life and a minor in Music in 2003. She and her husband Jeremy (an Associate Research Professor in the Office of Digital Humanities) are the parents of 4 boys, with only 17-year-old twins at home. When she’s not dreaming of her favorite place (Paris), Brooke enjoys playing piano, baking, watching K-Drama, and cheering on the Cougars.

Courtney Bulsiewicz, Assistant Academic Director

Courtney is a Visiting Professor in the English Department, teaching a variety of writing classes as well as world literature. She received her MFA from BYU, studying the personal essay, with particular expertise in lyric and flash creative nonfiction. Her writing has been published in River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Short Reads, Cutbank, and elsewhere. Her current work is a memoir in essays on her relationship with her father. Her and her husband have two young boys, filling family time with baseball, gymnastics, and cross country. She’s reading the Harry Potter series for the first time with her oldest son, and, in her own time, she’s having fun getting through The Great American Novels.

Brian Croxall, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2024 – 2027)

Brian Croxall is Associate Research Professor of Digital Humanities at Brigham Young University. His research interests include American and English literatures from the nineteenth century to the present; game, trauma, and media studies (not all together!); comic strips, especially Peanuts; and pedagogy. With Diane K. Jakacki, he is the co-editor of What We Teach When We Teach DH (2023), from the University of Minnesota Press. He is also the co-editor, with Rachel A. Bowser, of Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2016, Minnesota). He has served in various national and international professional organizations, including as a member of both the Executive Council and Program Committee of the Modern Language Association.

Cherice Montgomery Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Cherice Montgomery (Associate Professor of Spanish Pedagogy) coordinates the Spanish Teaching Major at BYU.  Her work explores the creative potential of design-based pedagogies and 21st century literacies for inspiring change in world language education.  Cherice’s current research investigates the nature and design of compelling learning experiences in immersive contexts such as Dual Language Immersion (DLI), Playable Case Study simulations (PCS), and Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL).  She has published in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, Die Unterrichtspraxis, Journal of Critical Inquiry into Curriculum and Instruction, and The Language Educator.  She serves on the NFLRC Advisory Board and frequently facilitates workshops and webinars. Cherice has been honored with several awards for excellence in teaching, including the UFLA Higher Education Teacher of the Year, the Douglas K. Christensen Teaching & Learning Faculty Fellowship, the ACTFL-NYSAFLT Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education, and the BYU Faculty Women’s Association Teaching Award.  Beyond academia, Cherice can be found birdwatching, cooking, or West Coast Swing dancing. 

Sara Phenix, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Sara Phenix is Associate Professor of French. She earned her PhD in 2013 at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Dix-Neuf, and Romance Notes. Her current book project on the corset focuses on fashion, fertility, and fiction in nineteenth-century France.

Chris Rogers, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Chris Rogers (Associate Professor, Linguistics) earned a B.A. in Spanish, an M.A. in Linguistics, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics (U of U) focusing on language documentation, description, typology, and the historical implications of each. In his research, he concentrates on the value of linguistic diversity both globally and individually focusing primarily on the indigenous languages of Central and South America (though he has worked with other language groups and hopes to collaborate with more communities around the world). In his teaching, Chris insists that his students “get dirty with data” instead of keeping it at arm’s length, by immersing themselves in the practice of doing linguistic analysis. Currently, his favorite things to talk about are gamification, information packaging, precategoriality, semantic alignment, and objective characterizations of linguistic diversity within a community’s linguistic ecosystem. If he isn’t in his office, Chris is probably in the backcountry or dancing with his wife, Sarah.

James Swensen, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2024-2027)

James Swensen is professor of art history and the history of photography at Brigham Young University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 2009. His research interests include American photography, the art and photography of the American West, and the representation of pilgrimage. His work has appeared in History of Photography, TransAtlantica: Revue d’Études Américaines, American Indian Quarterly, and The European Journal of American Culture, among others. He is also the author of two monographs: Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), and In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954 (University of Utah Press, 2018), which won the Juanita Brooks Best Book Award from the Utah Historical Society in 2019. He also co-authored (with Farina King and Mike Taylor) Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School, published by the University of Arizona Press in 2021.

Stephen Tuttle, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2023 – 2026)

Stephen Tuttle is an associate professor of English. He teaches courses in creative writing and American literature, with scholarly interests in the short story, microfiction, and prose poetry. Among other assignments, he has served on the Faculty Advisory Committee and as associate chair of English.

Nieves Knapp, One-Year Faculty Fellow

Nieves Pérez Knapp received her PhD in 2003 and is a Teaching Professor of Spanish Language and Culture. Besides her work in undergraduate and graduate Spanish classes at BYU, she teaches and trains pre-service and in-service Spanish teachers, as well as supervises student instructors. Nieves has presented at numerous professional conferences at the state, regional and national level, has published several articles in professional journals, and co-authored textbooks to teach Spanish and Portuguese for Spanish speakers. Currently, she is working on a textbook for Spanish students moving towards advanced proficiency and another focused on developing conversational strategies, as well as co-authoring a manuscript with her Portuguese pedagogy colleagues. Nieves has also received teaching excellence awards at the university, state, and regional levels.

Justin White, One-Year Faculty Fellow

Justin White received his PhD from University of California, Riverside and is an associate professor of philosophy. He was an academic visitor with the philosophy faculty at Oxford University for Trinity Term 2025. His research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century European philosophy (especially phenomenology and existentialism) and contemporary philosophy of agency and moral psychology. Among other things, he is interested in love, skill, self-ignorance, and the process of personal change, including how we take (or avoid) responsibility for our actions and ourselves. His scholarship has been published in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, European Journal of Philosophy, Southern Journal of Philosophy, and Midwest Studies in Philosophy, as well as various edited volumes. He is currently working on a book project on perception, agency, and human existence in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.

Jasmine Torres, Humanities Center Social Media Intern

Jasmine Torres is a senior at Brigham Young University, where she’s majoring in Public Relations and minoring in Asian Studies. As the Social Media Intern at the BYU Humanities Center, Jasmine plays a key role in the Center’s digital outreach, creating engaging content and fostering a sense of community. Originally from Central California, Jasmine brings a rich multicultural perspective to her work. She’s fluent in Spanish and is actively learning Korean. Outside of her academic and professional life, Jasmine loves playing tennis and pickleball. Jasmine is excited to leverage her diverse experiences and skills in a future career dedicated to meaningful and inclusive communication.

Sawyer Wood, Humanities Center Intern and Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

George Dibble, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

George Dibble is a writer. He reads. He is from Florida and is studying English. The American Modernists (such as the Imagists, within the movement’s poetry sector) are close friends of his, and he plans to continue discussing them at the PhD level. Dibble enjoys a simple life and is grateful to be surrounded by such inspiring light at BYU. You can find many of his publications on his website: https://georgedibble.com/.

Brooke Farnsworth, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Brooke is a senior majoring in English Teaching and minoring in Global Women’s Studies. Brooke grew up in Southern California and loves the ocean. She loves reading and writing (thus, the English degree) and hopes to become a professor. Brooke is fascinated by Victorian poetry and the intersection of theology and literature. She currently works as a research assistant studying the fine press movement. She also works at the Research and Writing Center. Brooke recently presented at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Brooke spends her free time baking, walking, writing, attempting to crochet, and looking for cats.

Aiden Jones, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Aiden Jones is a Junior majoring in American Studies and English. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky with her parents and three younger siblings. She loves her work as a tutor at the campus Research and Writing Center and is the Assistant Program Director for the American Studies Program. She plans to pursue a master’s degree focused on American Literature and is especially fascinated by transatlantic modernist writers. Someday she hopes to be a professor so she can spend her life at school. Aiden spends time outside of school baking, reading, writing, hosting poetry nights, watching movies at International Cinema, hiking, skiing, and running.

Porter Kindall, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Porter is a senior studying Interdisciplinary Humanities and Philosophy. His research interests lie in contemporary French philosophy, hermeneutics, and Latter-day Saint Studies. When not academically engaged, you can find him watch Kore-Eda films, in the kitchen, or feeding the ducks. 

Julia Morgan, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Julia Morgan is an Interdisciplinary Humanities major with a minor in Global Environmental Studies. She is co-president of the GES student association, creator of the BYU Stewardship Symposium Student Writing Seminar, and part of the BYU IFSA committee. She also loves her job at BYU’s Research and Writing Center (with Aiden!) She’s interested in connection in conflict and interfaith; as well as nature writing and ecocriticism. When she’s not dashing around campus, she loves to run, read, and bake.